From Beyond The Rainbow Somewhere

movies/series about psychopaths

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Before I can suggest anything I want to make something clear first, because I’ve seen this misconception a lot here.

Hannibal Lecter isn’t a psychopath. At best he’s a sadistic high-functioning sociopath. In fact Thomas Harris specified it several times that Hannibal wasn’t a psychopath and that he wanted to write a book about a perfect sociopath. The producers of the movies thought it’d be better calling the guy a psychopath without knowing what a psychopath is.

Hannibal was an asocial toddler and grew up to care only for his sister. He enjoyed seclusion and the trauma that shaped him was eating his own sister after some Nazi soldiers killed his parents in a conflict with the Russians. Later USSR took over his family’s mansion and used it as an orphanage. He stayed silent for years. This also became his trigger later. Anyone who knows that difference between a psychopath and a sociopath would never call Hannibal a psychopath.

Unfortunately every Hollywood movie or an American series portray psychopaths in a horrendous manner so I can suggest some anime, light novels, and mangaka that do them justice.

Johan Liebert, the titular monster of the anime and manga Monster. This boy had an operation as a kid because he was shot in the head. When they scanned his brains, they were shocked to find a peculiar brain formation that they didn’t understand at that time (Nazi Germany). The boy had no remorse, sadness, and failed to register the humane emotions others were able to. He cared for no one but his twin sister and the doctor who saved his life, but that didn’t stop him from screwing them. He possessed superficial charm and all the traits of a psychopath and cared for no one except himself. The time frame of the anime was before they came to terms of naming us so they just called him a Monster when they found zero change in his pulse throughout his actions.

Makishima Shogo from Psycho-Pass. In a utopic Japan where a system called Sybil judged people as a god and saw through their souls to see who’s prone to depravity and who’s not, Shogo was able to lie, kill, and manipulate the entirety of Japan without being spotted. Sybil was unable to judge him because he exerted no kind of emotions when he was slitting a throat, seeing his friend blown to bits, or seeing his enemy shred to pieces by cyborg hounds. He was neutral to everything and anything. He didn’t understand himself as a kid because he was always bored and rarely felt joy. He started entertaining himself by reading and seeking art, and soon he disliked the current Japan and became an anarchist. His aim is to destroy Sybil. In the anime his type was called A Priori Acquit (Criminally Asymptomatic), those who are free from any reaction to criminal activities.

Tanya Degurechaff from Youjo Senki (Saga of Tanya The Evil). This one what I’d personally call a perfect depiction of paths. The story goes around an atheist who was thrown before a train by a petty employee for getting fired. The MC then stands before Yahweh. The MC refutes the possibility of a god and tells him that if he’s a god then he’s not doing his job properly. Yahweh banishes the impious human to an alternate universe in the body of young girl. This world resembles the world of WWI and the MC finds himself on the side of Germany. The MC’s top priority is to survive. The anime shows how he’d save his comrades to keep up his good name, how he’d manipulate his way to a promotion, how he’d do his best to have human shields, how he’d strife to being away from the war and make sure he’s not in danger. He’s self-preservative to a vast level and he’s devoid from empathy, regret, shame, and guilt. He manipulates everything around him just to live and survive the war, and he doesn’t care about anyone. This made him/her the perfect soldier in the army. That’s what a psycho/sociopath would do in these situations. We wouldn’t kill for fun, but if it’s us or them we’ll make sure we walk out of it.